This application is related to co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 456,324, titled "MULTI-TRACK MAGNETIC HEAD AND METHOD OF FABRICATING THE SAME", filed on Jan. 6, 1983 by the present inventor.
This invention relates generally to magnetic head for use with magnetic recording/reproducing devices, such as tape recorders, and more particularly, the present invention relates to magnetic heads having a coil made on a film substrate.
Conventional magnetic heads comprise a coil made of a copper wire, which is wound around a core via an insulator. In such conventional magnetic heads having a wound coil, since an insulating film is first wound around the core, the space left for the coil is limited, resulting in a small number of coil turns. Furthermore, since reduction in thickness of a copper wire has a limit, the number of turns of the coil is also limited. For these reasons, it has been diffcult to provide small magnetic heads. Especially, in the case of reproduce heads, a large number of coil turns is required to show an adequate signal output amplitude. Moreover, when handling a high-frequency signal, such as a digital signal, the output signal amplitude is apt to be low due to short wavelength on a recording medium. In the case of a multi-track head, the space between adjcent cores is limited, and thus a large number of coil turns cannot be expected.
In order to remove the above-described drawbacks inherent to the conventional wound-coil type heads, it is theoretically possible to employ a printed coil formed on a substrate as a coil pattern. Such a printed coil is known as U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,789 titled "VOICE COIL ASSEMBLY FOR A SPEAKER". However, such a printed coil has not been used hitherto for magnetic heads for the following reasons. Although it is possible to increase the number of coil turns when a printed circuit forming technique is used to fabricate a spiral coil pattern, such a printed coil having a large number of turns is apt to have a large diameter or width, which causes the entire width of a magnetic head to be increased when incorporated therein. Furthermore, it has been difficult to incorporate such a plate-like or film-like printed coil with the core of a magnetic head. Due to these difficulties, magnetic heads used in magnetic recording/reproducing devices employ a conventional wound coil, and therefore the conventional heads suffer from the above-mentioned drawbacks.